Chapter 24

The sun. An orb of fire shrinking in dark water. Plunk, stipple, swipe. My mother brushed midnight blue into churning waves. Facing away from me in bare feet, jeans, and paint-stained T-shirt, she painted a vast gray wall rising upward into nothing. The sunset shimmered, then faded and was gone. I was dreaming.

"Mother?"

She didn't answer or seem to know I was even there, beginning a new painting on the slate-gray wall. Her brush widened of its own accord as she stroked four stark lines extending out of a black rectangle. She dipped her brush again, a smear of white and splatter of gold.

Dropping the brush and palette to the stone floor with a clack, she reached up to two of the black lines, her fingers curling into the wall around the painted posts. With a hard jerk, she pulled out a three-dimensional bed, dragging it from the flat canvas.

A rhythmic pulse pounded in my head—my heartbeat—as I recognized the form. Decorative gold pillows sat atop a pile of white silk sheets.

"No."

My whisper echoed and died. She stared at me with eyes of crimson, devoid of any emotion, any love or care. Her slender arm lifted, pointing a long finger to the bed. I shook my head.

"No."

Without moving, I was under the covers, sliding under silk, brushing against naked skin. He was here in a sea of white, a shark in glossy waters. Folds of fabric wrapped me in place. I clawed in panic, drowning. He caught me, laughing in my ear, whispering with a satin-smooth lilt, "I knew you'd come back to me, my sweet. Now, we have eternity together."

Smothering in snow-white silk and cold hands, I screamed.

"No!"

Sticky with sweat, I jerked awake in Jude's bed with him lying behind me. It was still dark out the window, so it was the middle of the night or very early before dawn.

"Shh," he whispered. "It was a dream."

Yes. Just a dream. Not soul-sifted. A dream.

A strong hand slid up my arm, squeezing gently, bringing me back to the here and now. After a shower last night, I'd slept in one of his T-shirts and boxer briefs. The heady scent of Jude all around me settled my spirit back into a safe place.

He spooned behind me from behind, having put on pajama pants last night before he climbed in with me. Now that it was quite clear my life depended on keeping my body "untainted," Jude was keeping tight control over himself.

My wrists were a little sore from being bound and my jerking on them to get free last night, but I totally understood his reasoning.

"Do you want to talk about it?" murmured a sleep-husky Jude. "Did you dream of him?"

I cleared my throat. "He can't soul-sift me and can't take me unless I'm tainted, right?"

"No, he can't. Unless you're planning on an escapade of murder that I don't know about, then you're completely safe."

I sighed with relief, but that wasn't the only thing on my mind.

"I dreamed about my mother." Jude's fingers stopped for a second, then continued on their trail back up my arm. "It's the second time in recent weeks I've dreamed about her."

"What is it that troubles you?"

I flipped over. My hand caressed the bare skin of his chest in the dark. I refrained from touching him, curling my hand between us instead. As much as I wanted to touch and caress him, I wouldn't do that and tempt him. It was only cruel when he couldn't get pleasure from me if I did. It was all so fucking frustrating.

My mind drifted back to that dream about my mother.

"Everything troubles me. You said that…when we were in her gallery at my house, you said that she'd gone mad. How did you know?"

His hand had continued its journey around my back, making lazy circles between my shoulder blades. We were pressed close, the warmth and strength of his body cocooning me in safety.

"I've been alive a long time, Genevieve. A very long time. I've witnessed a devastating amount of pestilence, plagues of all kinds. They come, they go, they mutate and come again." He coasted a hand up my spine under my hair and wrapped my nape. "But the disease of madness is the same, never changing, a pattern from order falling into disorder, from constancy into chaos. Your mother's paintings didn't simply evolve. They illustrated her descent from lucidity to desperation to insanity. I don't want to hurt you, but the evidence is quite clear."

I knew he was right and couldn't be angry at his open observation.

"She left us, you know. Dad and me."

He didn't respond, just continued to soothe me with his trailing fingers, waiting for me to continue.

"It must've been madness that made her do it, because I know she loved us. I know that. She loved me. But just…not enough."

Jude's roughened hand brushed the hair away from my cheek, where his fingers curled along the side of my neck, thumb resting in the crook between ear and jaw. He didn't offer condolences I'd heard all my life, like it's not your fault or there's nothing more you could've done and other phrases I despised.

"How did she take her life?"

He knew for certain that she'd died by suicide without me ever having to say it. I felt the rope binding us to each other tighten a bit more. Our mothers ending in similar fates. My hand found its way to his bare chest. He tensed.

"The river," I answered bluntly. "She didn't leave a note, unless you want to call her version of ‘The Young Martyr' a suicide note. The day she completed it, she drove out to the Mississippi River bridge and jumped off. There were witnesses. One of them had videoed it with his phone and posted it on Facebook of all things."

Jude's thumb stroked down the length of my neck, still soothing.

"Did you see the video?" he asked, knowing I was struggling to share this part of my life but needed to do it anyway.

"Yes. My dad had hidden it on a flash drive in her jewelry box that he'd stored in the attic. FB had pulled it down once it was reported, but he'd kept a copy." I swallowed against the memory. "When I was thirteen, I went searching for things of hers, needing to remember, needing to touch her. I watched the video only once and never again. Once was enough."

The video began where she was already leaning out from the bridge's railing, holding on with one hand. Still in her everyday painting garb—bare feet, jeans, and all. Her sun-gold hair had pulled from its knot, whipping wildly in yellow streams as if the wind wanted to take her with it.

People shouted. In the distance, sirens wailed, trying to get to the scene before the desperate woman clinging between life and death made an irrevocable decision.

Someone shouted, "Lady, don't do this. It's not worth it." Her face snapped back to the speaker, somewhere near the guy with the phone.

Haunted eyes of a ghost stared straight into the camera. A sorrowful smile spread across her face before she said her dying words. "Yes, they are. They are worth it."

Then she let go. Someone screamed, but she was already gone, disappearing beyond the lens into the muddy depths of the churning river. I never understood her last words, and apparently never would. For who was there to explain them?

Jude's voice rumbled close to me in the dark. "Despite this tragedy, this loss, you have done more than survive, you have flourished. She would be proud of the woman you have become."

When Jude called me a woman, something inside always stood straight up at attention, wanting to be everything he saw in me and more.

I didn't want to talk about my mother anymore. My hand was making its own journey across the hard planes of his chest. I trailed an index finger along the ridge down the middle, wishing I could see the beautiful swirls of ink. However, the darkness made me brave. I'd never touched him quite like this.

"Genevieve."

A warning, low and deep. Oh God, that voice. My fingers splayed across the ridges of his abdomen, tight and tense at the moment.

"Genevieve, what are you doing?"

"Exploring."

My hand flattened across a pectoral. Did he just growl?

"Sorry," I added, snatching my hand back and curling it under my chin. "You just feel good."

A strangled laugh rumbled from him. "More like torture. Think I'd prefer the rack." He took my wrist gently and nipped the fleshy part of my palm, teeth pinching.

"Ouch!"

He kissed where he'd bitten, trailing hot kisses along the inside of my wrist. I made a little moan.

He rolled me onto my back and pressed his body into mine. Even with the goose-down between us, I could feel the hardness of his erection and the source of the aforementioned torture. Quite a sizeable torture device, I might add. My mouth went dry.

"Oh."

"Yes." He chuckled. "Oh."

"Jude, do you think we, I mean, will we ever be rid of Danté?"

"Yes," came the immediate, terse reply. "Why do you ask?"

"Well, I was hoping, wondering if, when—"

"Genevieve, relax and tell me what you're thinking."

I blew out a puff of exasperation, thankful the darkness hid the blush rising into my cheeks. It certainly did make me brave, because I said exactly what I was wondering and never would have done such a thing by the light of day.

"When will we get to make love?"

The man looming above me froze so still I'd have thought he wasn't there were it not for the comforting weight of him on top of me. As usual, my heart hammered an erratic beat. He didn't move, didn't speak.

"Jude?"

"When all the threats are dead or your power outweighs theirs."

"You're going to kill all of the demon princes? All seven?" My tone was flat and disbelieving.

"Yes. Or you'll help me."

"Me?"

"Once you come into your full power, you'll be stronger than any creature on this earth."

I laughed. It seemed so ludicrous. Who was I but a young student from New Orleans? Apparently, fate had much more planned for me. It was all still so surreal.

"So," I heaved a sigh, "that means we will get to have sex, hopefully, soonish."

His head fell forward with a choked half laugh, face nuzzling into my neck and hair.

"Why are you laughing? You want to, right? You told me last night—"

"Woman, you undo me," he whispered in a way that made goose bumps rise all over. "The things I want to do to your beautiful body would condemn me to the most everlasting, deepest pit in hell. Do I want to? Christ, you have no idea."

He started nibbling my neck slowly. I lifted my chin to give him better access, melting under his hot mouth.

"Yes, I want you," he said, brushing his lips across mine in a brief caress, teasing me, not diving in. He lifted a bare inch. A glimmer of amber eyes pierced through the dark. "I want you in my arms. I want you in my bed. I want to bury myself deep inside you and feel you shatter beneath me, again and again. I want you daily, nightly, repeatedly, constantly, forever. And when I know it's safe to take you, you'd best be ready. If you're not, you'd better run and hide, because it will take a legion of angels and demons to keep me off of you. Even then, you won't stand a chance."

Holy shit!I think my heart just stopped. A silver streak of panic shot through me, but desire and anticipation quickly overpowered that shrinking emotion.

"Oh," I finally managed to say in all my magnanimous eloquence.

"Yes." He bit my bottom lip much less gingerly than before. "Oh." Then licked the entrance to my mouth before falling back to my side.

"Now, be a good girl and roll over before I lose control of myself."

I rolled over. Even so, he spooned snugly up to me, making a grumbling sound. My mind raced away with very naughty thoughts, but I wasn't stupid. I recognized the danger we were both in. If we gave in to temptation now, the consequence would be not only permanent separation from each other, but literally an eternity of hell for me. So, like a good girl, I changed the subject to get our minds off the present exquisitely painful predicament we were in.

"Why doesn't Kat have a strong English accent? She was born and raised in England, right?"

I stared at the windows, two blocks of faint light streaming in from the streetlamps.

"Kat has tried to scrub out her life as a human, which included her life as one of the English nobility."

"So, demon hunters aren't human?"

"Not exactly, not anymore," he replied. "Flamma operate in a different realm. You are like us now, even not fully awakened."

I pondered that a moment, wondering when I'd be fully awakened and what that would entail. My thoughts wandered back to Kat.

"Well, why did she want to forget her human life? What happened?"

"I'm afraid those are her secrets to tell. As you meet others like us, you'll find we keep certain things to ourselves."

"No. You're kidding."

He pinched my upper arm as punishment.

"Ow!"

Then kissed it and burrowed closer behind me, one arm banding around my waist. "Suffice it to say, she had a cruel husband. Uncommonly cruel. But Kat's a survivor. Like you."

Like me. Yes, I was a survivor. I'd already survived a mother's suicide and several demonic attacks, including the horrific assault on my soul by Danté. I would survive and continue on.

"So, what's the story with her and George?"

His chest rumbled against my back as he let out a short laugh. "They have a history together."

"Um, yeah. I gathered that. So, they dated or something? Can saints even date? That's sort of weird."

Jude laughed a little harder—a sweet, wonderful sound that made my heart sing.

"Yes, they were together once, around the time she became one of us. I don't know why they fell out, but it seems they both are reluctant to let go. And George isn't exactly like Mother Teresa. He's more a warrior than an angel of mercy."

"Yeah, I figured that one out tonight."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, I doubt Mother Teresa has kissed anybody like George kissed me."

"Are you taunting me, woman?" he grumbled, squeezing me tighter around the waist.

"Taunting you? Me? Of course not." I paused, suppressing the laugh bubbling up my throat. "But I can't stop thinking about that kiss."

He blew out a breath, sounding like a tire deflating, before flipping me promptly onto my back. I did laugh then, wrapping my arms around his neck, my fingers combing into his hair.

"I knew it had to be done, but God help me, when I saw his mouth on yours, I thought I was going to have to kill one of my dearest friends."

"It wasn't that kind of a kiss," I laughed. "Didn't you hear him say that?"

"Yes, I know. Since it wasn't a real kiss, then I'm sure it wasn't any good," he said as a statement not a question.

"Hmmm, well, I wouldn't exactly say that."

"Wicked wench," he muttered before fully possessing me with his mouth, smothering anything else I might say. My body arched for him, a soft moan escaping.

"Jude," I murmured when he let me breathe, "you have nothing to worry about." I pulled his head down, angling so that I could be the one to nibble at his jaw and the soft patch of skin by his ear. He drew in a sharp breath between his teeth.

"Genevieve…Genevieve, what are you doing to me?"

He sounded desperate, like a man on the brink. His hand clutched at my hip. Even through this damn comforter, I felt his warm hand squeezing that spot that made me tighten in low, wonderfully feminine places.

The well of emotion in his voice threatened to ignite us both into flames. I was playing with fire, and hell if I didn't want to get burned, but the consequences of giving in to the heat of Jude could result in Danté having possession of me.

Never.I needed to take the reins. I was pushing Jude too far.

"You like to say my name," I said, combing my fingers softly through the back of his hair. He said my name often, and sometimes his voice lilted like a reverent plea. I'd often wondered about this but never had the courage to ask. Until now. "Why is that?"

Breathing labored, he fell onto his back. I snuggled closer but not too close, wrapping one arm across his waist. He urged me up so that his left arm pillowed my head. When his chest finally rose and fell in a steady rhythm reflecting in-control Jude, he spoke.

"Did you know that Genevieve is the name of the patron saint of Paris?"

"No," I murmured encouragingly. Jude rarely spoke of his past, especially his life in France. I understood this as a small gift.

"When Genevieve was seven years old, Saint Germanus, the bishop of Auxerre, prophesied her future greatness. She promised to become consecrated to God, and so she did on that very day and again when she was fifteen years old. In 451, when Attila the Hun threatened to overtake the city of Paris, promising to pillage and kill all those inside, young Genevieve implored the inhabitants not to abandon their homes but to pray and have faith that God would save them. I was there, in the crowd, and she seemed to understand something that no one else could."

"And what was that?"

"That good will prevail if you maintain faith despite the odds. Paris was my city to protect at the time as a Dominus Daemonum, so I had no plans to leave regardless. But she, a young girl with unwavering faith shining in her eyes, put me to shame. Many people were furious at her outright blind faith, as they called it. Some wanted to stone her. Others fled in fear during the night."

"I imagine you put a stop to the stoning," I said, wrapping my arm more tightly around him.

"I did," was his curt reply, but I heard the smile in his voice.

"And did Attila the Hun pillage the city?"

"No. She led a group out to the ramparts of the city before daybreak. I was there too, watching. In the face of the enemy, armed with spears and bloodlust, she led the faithful in prayer as the morning light swept over them. That night, Attila led his army south to Orleans, and the city was saved."

"Was she, was she a Vessel?"

"No. She wasn't Flamma of any kind. She was simply a woman."

Why would he tell me this story?

"So, you like my name because it reminds you of the nun who saved Paris?"

The words sounded flippant, but I didn't mean them to. A slow rumble of laughter vibrated beneath my cheek where it lay on his chest.

"I like your name for many reasons." His hand played with strands of my hair that spilled down his arm pillowing my head. "Because it reminds me of a woman who had faith in the impossible when all signs threatened bloody death. Because it is French, a name that speaks to me in my native tongue. But most importantly," he said, shifting and lifting my chin. Our eyes met. He hesitated but finally dove ahead and said what seemed perched on the tip of his tongue anyway. "Because it is your name, the name of the woman who shines a light in my darkness; the woman who will save me from my worst enemy, despair; the woman who currently holds my jaded heart in her very lovely hands."

He went still. His pulse sped up, pounding in his breast beneath my hands. He was afraid. Of me, and how I would respond to such an open declaration. Trusting me with this vulnerable part of him made something precious open inside. I propped myself on my elbow, weaving my fingers through his available hand, pulling our clasped hands to my lips, grazing a kiss on his knuckles.

"Well," I whispered softly, "I promise to be very, very careful. I've always been known to have capable hands."

"I bet you have," he replied at the somewhat teasing statement, pulling me closer.

But the kiss that followed wasn't filled with heated passion or bridled lust. Rather, it was one of adoration and blooming hope for the both of us, the bonds weaving in and around our hearts pulling a little bit tighter.